Prince Rupert: The Last Cavalier

by Charles Spencer

  Actresses in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century England were a source of prurient fascination: they were, in a sense, the nation’s first celebrities. Playwrights titillated theatre-goers with plotlines that included blatant flirtation, feminine guiles, and rough sexual domination. The women were similarly used backstage: deprived of privacy, members of the public could access them there. Samuel Pepys enjoyed watching them in various stages of preparation, particularly undressing. He recalled, with a frisson, a visit ‘into the [at-] tiring rooms and to the women’s shift where Nell [Gwynn] was dressing herself and was all unready’.[624] The playwright Shadwell suggested that a few guineas would ease a man’s admittance to the actresses when off duty, while some of them might grant ‘free ingress and egress too’. In popular culture, actresses were viewed as little better than whores.

  To the wealthy male, theatre-going provided an opportunity to scout for a mistress. Given the insecurity of their jobs and the inferiority of pay (experienced actresses would receive 30 shillings per week; an actor 50 shillings), there was a financial vulnerability to exploit. In general, these were women who had only escaped domestic service because of their looks. ‘Tis as hard a matter for a pretty woman to keep herself honest in a theatre,’ one observer wrote, ‘as ‘tis for an apothecary to keep his treacle from the flies in hot weather; for every libertine in the audience will be buzzing about her honey-pot.’[625]

  The first time a woman took a major role in a play in England was 8 December 1660, when the King’s Company employed a female as Desdemona. This was such a novelty that Killigrew thought an explanation necessary. He commissioned the poet Thomas Jordan to write a special introduction, which included the advice:

  The Woman plays today, mistake me not.

  No Man in gown, or Page in petticoat.

  Jordan stressed that this innovation must be greeted with an open mind:

  Do you not twitter, Gentlemen? I know

  You will be censuring, do’t fairly though;

  ‘Tis possible a virtuous woman may

  Abhor all sorts of looseness, and yet play;

  Play on the stage, where all eyes are upon her,

  Shall we count that a crime France calls an honour?[626]

  Peg Hughes’s name was long associated with this groundbreaking performance, but more recent research points to the distinction being Anne Marshall’s. It seems likely, rather, that Peg was with the King’s Company from soon after its 1663 beginnings: the prompter John Downes, writing forty-five years later, remembered Hughes as one of the first women employed by Killigrew. There is also a reference to ‘Hews’ in a 1661 or 1662 cast-list for The Royal King, which suggests Peg’s earlier involvement. She was certainly one of the first women to play Desdemona and was the first Theodosia in Evening Love, Dryden’s play of 1668. Also in the 1668-9 season, she played Angellina in The Sisters. It is possible that she was playing one of these roles when she captivated the prince.

  Rupert had slept with actresses before, his name appearing in a list of shame composed by the pious John Evelyn in October 1666: ‘This night was acted my Lord Brahal’s tragedy called Mustapha before their Majesties &c. at Court: at which I was present, very seldom at any time, going to the public theatres, for many reasons, now as they were abused, to an atheistical liberty, foul and indecent; women now (& never ‘til now) permitted to appear & act, which inflaming several young noblemen & gallants, became their whores, & to some their wives, witness the Earl of Oxford, Sir R. Howard, Pr: Rupert, the E[arl] of Dorset, & another greater person than any of these [the King], who fell into their snares, to the reproach of their noble families, & ruin both of body and soul.’[627] However, no other actress had an effect on Rupert to match that of Miss Hughes.

  Although Peg’s name is not as famous as those of half a dozen Restoration leading ladies, she caused a stir during the mid 1660s. An anonymous admirer found her in many ways more captivating than her more celebrated contemporaries:

  Who must not be partial

  To pretty Nan Marshall?

  Though I think, be it known,

  She too much doth de-moan,

  But that in the Moor

  May be right, to be sure,

  Since her part & her name

  Do tell her the same

  But none can refuse

  To say Mistress Hughes

  Her rival out-does.[628]

  Rupert’s transformation from lugubrious, frightening, bloodied warrior to skittish lover caused hilarity among Charles’s court. Peg Hughes was a great beauty, with dark ringletted hair, a fine figure, and particularly good legs. However, she had a past: when Pepys met her, he wrote that she was ‘a mighty pretty woman, and seems, but is not, modest’.[629] The diarist recorded that she had been the mistress of the poet and playwright Sir Charles Sedley. Sedley, twenty years Rupert’s junior, was a favourite of Charles II and one of his ‘wits’. It also seems likely that Peg had a child with an earlier lover, a boy called Arthur who would write a play called The Frolics in 1681. For a man as feared and respected as Rupert to fall so hopelessly in love with a common actress, the cast-off of one of the court wags and the former plaything of others, somewhat reduced his stature.

  However, Rupert was sincere in his love and Peg proved not to be the passing fancy of an older man hankering after young flesh. Even if Grammont was right and Peg initially resisted the prince’s advances in order to up her price, the couple seems to have come quickly to a happy accommodation. She continued to act for a while and in October 1669 was listed by the Lord Chamberlain as a member of the King’s Company. This provided her with some status: actresses registered with the Lord Chamberlain were considered to be servants of the monarch and enjoyed privileges, such as being immune from arrest for debt.

  Being the mistress of the third most important man in the royal family brought Peg immediate and dramatic social elevation. Sir Peter Lely, Charles II’s principal painter, completed her portrait soon afterwards, and it is as a lady rather than an actress or mistress that she is shown. She holds a lemon in one hand and a scallop shell in the other. The lemon symbolises purification and love, while the shell represents resurrection, a reference to how Peg has been rescued from a life of immorality by Rupert’s love. Behind her, water cascades from a dolphin’s mouth, while two cherubs attend the dolphin: the theme remains love, purity, and deliverance from a dark alternative.

  In the portrait, Peg wears a rich silk nightdress, common to the court’s tastes at the time, together with a fine pearl necklace and bulbous pearl earrings. The prince gave generously to his lover: he was in his late middle age, besotted by a young beauty who made him genuinely happy. ‘I am obliged to her for many things,’[630] he acknowledged to his youngest sister. In turn, Sophie wrote to Charles Louis in January 1674: ‘George William [of Brunswick-Luneburg — Sophie’s brother-in-law] said, that Prince Rupert ought to get married.’[631]

  Peg had given birth the previous year, causing Rupert’s affection and generosity to redouble. He proudly claimed the illegitimate girl as his daughter: her name was Ruperta. Ruperta inherited feistiness from both sides, which was soon evident, her father delightedly writing to his sister Sophie: ‘She already rules the whole house and sometimes argues with her mother, which makes us all laugh.’[632]

  Never a wealthy man, the prince denied his small family nothing. Peg proved expensive: in particular, she liked to gamble and she loved jewels. It has been estimated that Rupert gave his lover £20,000 worth of jewellery in a decade. Some have claimed the real figure was ten times that. It was probably somewhere in between.

  Her love of the stage persisted. In 1676, six years after retiring, she briefly resurrected her career, this time for the Duke’s Company, which was by then considered superior to its rival. She appeared in at least eight plays that season, her credits ranging from Octavia in The Wrangling Lovers to Charmion in Sedley’s Antony and Cleopatra. These were her last performances, for in 1677 Rupert built a home for her and Rup
erta in Hammersmith, on the site of a house he bought from Sir Nicholas Crispe. It was a grand building, which cost £25,000 to construct. Those who remembered Peg’s humble beginnings were jealous of her ever-increasing grandeur. Captain Alexander Radcliff mocked her in a ditty:

  Had I been hang’d I could not choose

  But laugh at whores that drop’s from slues

  Seeing that Mrs Margaret Hughes so fine is.[633]

  Rupert’s generosity was a reflection of his happiness and gratitude for this late chance to sample the pleasures of family life. However, relationships such as his were increasingly satirised on stage. Lustful, rich, old men falling in love with pretty, scheming, young women became a favourite theme of Restoration comedy. Crown’s The Countrey Wit, of 1675, even seems to contain references to Rupert’s various trading ventures and to his past battles with the Dutch. The prince may well have been in the playwright’s mind when constructing the character Lord Drybone and Peg could have been the prototype of his greedy mistress, Betty Frisque:

  DRYBONE: Go, go, hussey, you are an unkind naughty girl, to make me pay thus dear for every smile and smirk I get from you; I dare safely say, not a dimple you make, when you smile, that does not cost me, one with another, forty pounds a dimple.

  BETTY: ‘Tis your own fault, my dear Lord, you will be chiding o’one, and quarrelling with one.

  DRYBONE: Chiding o’one, and quarrelling with one; ay, and I had better quarrel on, I am a fool to buy Peace so dear, considering what a poor trade I have, and how little I get by it.

  BETTY: People that cannot barter commodity for commodity, must spend money in specie, you know they do it all the world over.

  DRYBONE: But that’s a very ruinous trade, one had better war with such a country, and forbid all traffic with it, my dear Frisky.[634]

  There is also an echo of Rupert in Squire Oldsapp, the lascivious old dupe in Thomas Durfey’s The Night-Adventurers, a romantic farce of 1678. Rupert was famous for his love of science, and some of his experiments were popularly believed to be attempts at alchemy and other scientific trickery. Before meeting the pert Madam Tricklove, the aged Oldsapp engages in crude magic spells:

  Draw near ye Spirits, that dispense

  Your Pow’rs o’er Concupiscence;

  Bring all your Spells and come along,

  To make an amorous Old Man young!

  Whose frozen joints, long since have cool’d his passion,

  But now he sighs, and blows, and puffs, for generation;

  Come, come away; your assistance confer,

  And then I shall be the happiest Old Cur,

  The happiest Old Cur in the Nation.[635]

  The relationship between the prince and the showgirl was touched by tragedy in the summer of 1670. Peg’s brother, who was employed in Rupert’s household, was furious to hear one of Charles II’s retinue belittle his sister’s beauty and claim Nell Gwynn the prettier of the two actresses. On 20 June, six weeks after Nell had given birth to her royal bastard, Lady Chaworth wrote to Lord Roos that ‘one of the K[ing]’s servants bath killed Mr Hues, Peg Hue’s brother, servant to P. Robert upon a dispute whether Miss Nelly or she was the handsomer now at Windsor.’[636]

  The duel happened at Windsor, because the castle was now one of Rupert’s homes.

  Chapter Twenty-Four - Windsor Castle

  ‘The Constable of Windsor Castle is Keeper and Governor of the Castle, and is to Command any Garrison, or under Officers there ... The Constable of Windsor Castle is likewise Chief Forester and Keeper of the Forest of Windsor, which is a great command, especially to such as delight in Pleasures.’

  Sir Bulstrode Whitlock’s advice, contained in the ‘Windsor Castle Governor’s Book, 1668-1671’

  Windsor Castle, the Parliamentary acquisition that Rupert failed to retrieve early in the Civil War, was the rebels’ military headquarters for the remainder of the conflict. In this impregnable bastion the Royalists’ nemesis was spawned, its parade ground honing mastery of pike, musket, and sword. In the spring of 1645, the freshly hatched New Model Army disgorged from its gates, clad in scarlet and looking for action, certain that God would hand it victory. Naseby followed within seven weeks.

  Some of the rich crop of Royalist prisoners harvested that summer and autumn was stored in the castle. It had a history of incarcerating the highest born: Edward III had detained the kings of France and Scotland there. Eventually, Windsor held an English monarch captive. After his various false hopes had ended in disappointment, Charles I spent his last Christmas at the castle before moving to London for trial and execution. Parliament refused to allow the king’s head and trunk to be laid to rest in Henry VII’s Chapel at Westminster Abbey: its leading members, keen to fashion a workable national reconciliation, could not permit the creation of a shrine to their enemy in the capital.

  Loyal Bishop Juxon accompanied the royal coffin back to the castle through snowdrifts and presided over the night-time burial of his master’s remains. They were committed to a vault occupied by the coffins of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour, beneath the choir of St George’s Chapel. The king had cherished the Prayer Book, but the governor of the castle ‘positively and roughly’[637] refused to allow its use at the funeral: it was a forbidden religious text and he would brook no exception to the ban. The service therefore took place in silence, punctuated by the sobs and sighs of the tiny congregation. Present on this dismal occasion was Rupert’s friend the Duke of Richmond, who had offered to forfeit his head in place of his monarch’s.

  After the king’s death, Parliament initially decided that ‘the Castle of Windsor, with all the Houses, Parks and Lands there, belonging to the State, be sold for ready money’.[638] The stronghold was stripped of its magnificent decorations at the end of 1651, including ‘five pieces of hanging of Triumphs, 6 pieces of David, Nathan, Abigail and Solomon, 7 of the siege of Jerusalem, 5 of Goddesses.’[639] Such vanities were an affront to Puritans. They were also valuable works of art, their disposal providing extremely welcome revenue for a regime struggling to pay its soldiers’ wages. When John Evelyn visited the castle after its despoliation, his impressions were of ‘rooms melancholy and of ancient magnificence’.[640]

  When no buyer could be found for the castle, Cromwell planned to turn over the parks and woodlands to his soldiers, so they could lay down smallholdings for themselves, in the manner of Ancient Rome’s legionnaries. But the Constable, Sir Bulstrode Whitlock, juggled his devout Puritanism with a passion for hunting and he dissuaded his leader from a course that would have ruined his sport. Parliament instead resolved that Windsor should be one of eight prestigious properties — which included Whitehall, Greenwich, and Somerset House — ‘to be kept for the Lord Protector, and for succeeding Lord Protectors, for the honour of the Commonwealth.’[641] However, Cromwell found Hampton Court suited his needs and tastes better, and spent little time at Windsor.

  During the remainder of the Interregnum the castle was used, rather than enjoyed. It was on the roster of southern and Midland fortresses that took it in turns to be the administration’s military headquarters. The soldiers’ barracks were the fulcrum of activity, while the remaining quarters were turned over to the widows, wives, and children of those who had died or been wounded, fighting for the cause.

  The Stuart Restoration marked the castle’s return to royal favour. Charles II appreciated its military value and, concerned that he might follow his father as a victim of revolution, set about restoring it to its true purpose: a bastion of royal martial strength. It was essential to find a strong and able constable to command the garrison.

  Of secondary importance was the desire to have a place of enjoyment, outside London but within distance of it, where the king could retire and live in great style, free from the burden of his day-to-day responsibilities. Windsor had long been a royal pleasure-dome. William the Conqueror acquired it from monks, partly because its abundant woodlands provided excellent deer-hunting. Such sport had since entertained generations of king
s: the constable’s seal of office showed a castle between a stag’s antlers. But the stock of quarry had evaporated in a welter of poaching during the Interregnum, and the woods had also suffered from uncontrolled scavenging for firewood.

  Charles wanted his coverts replanted and his herds fostered. Somebody strong, determined, and trustworthy was needed to oversee this aspect of the governorship of the castle, administering the vast territory of ‘Windsor Forest’, whose twenty separate parks had a combined perimeter of 120 miles. They spread far beyond the town itself: ‘This forest lyeth in Berkshire,’ a contemporary recorded, ‘[and] also extends into it: It consisteth — Surrey, Hampshire, Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and Middlesex, The Thames bounding it North, The Lodden [river] west, Bradford River, and Gulddowne South. And the Way river East.’[642]

  From 1661, the constable was Viscount Mordaunt. His commission was terminated seven years later, after royal auditors unearthed financial irregularities. In the autumn of 1668, Charles II announced his replacement: ‘And know ye farther, that we reposing especial Trust & Confidence in the care, fidelity, and circumspection of our dear and entirely beloved cousin and counsellor Prince Rupert, Count Palatine of the Rhine, Duke of Bavaria and Cumberland, &c of our especial Grace, certain knowledge, and mere motion, have given & granted, and by these patents, for Us our Heirs & Successors, Do give & grant unto the said Prince, the Office & Place of Governor and Captain of our Castle of Windsor ...’[643]

  The generous public endorsement was a standard formula for the gazetting of such appointments. In truth, though, Charles was offering little more than a sop to his cousin. Rupert had long wanted to become Master of the Horse, a position of great honour given to the Duke of Albermarle as one of many rewards for his pivotal role in the Restoration. During the early 1660s, Rupert began negotiating the purchase of the post from the duke: ‘And they had almost agreed,’ James II later recorded, ‘But the King refused his consent, because the general’s [Albermarle’s] quitting it would be prejudicial to his affairs.’[644] This was a bitter blow for the prince. It is hard to think of a more suitable incumbent for the position than the man who had led the Cavaliers into military mythology. Certainly, Rupert believed the title to be his by rights.